Headlight Restoration

[gsta86]

so today's project was to bring back a little bit of original clarity in the headlights. no kind of video because you can find plenty on youtube, just as i did. i will give you a very brief step by step

step 1: clean headlights

step 2-4: wet sand w/600 grit, dry......wet sand w/1K grit, dry........wet sand w/2K grit, dry.

step 5: i then used the meguiars headlight restoration kit to bring back the shine. on the box it says you can use it all by itself, and you can catch videos of it online as well.

here is the finished product.

couple things i didn't do. some videos said go up to 3K grit, i didn't because checkers didn't have none. didn't use a sanding block or any such thing either, just old fashion hand. block might have helped speed up the process though. the meguiars kit comes w/a pretty handy buffing ball. handy if you have a drill to attach it too. let me know what you think or share your own experience.

 

[Bigredmariner]

Looks nice, I need to do this too. Mine are getting kind of cloudy and chipped up.

 

[buckshot85]

Looks like new very nice.

 

[PenguinLTZ]

Looks great! I used a polishing pad on my buffer with some polishing compound, and it seemed to work well too. (did this after the sanding)

 

[gsta86]

Looks great! I used a polishing pad on my buffer with some polishing compound, and it seemed to work well too. (did this after the sanding)

thats what meguiars says to do. if you get up close you can still see some very small sand paper scratches, but i think it'd go away after being buffed. a trip to home depot is in the works.

 

[RebelThunder]

Good work.

 

[700 sportsman]

We use 500, 800 (dry) and then 1200 and 3000 (wet) all done with an pneumatic orbital sander. Then follow that up with 3m headlight cleaner and white pad and then polish with a black pad on a non orbital pneumatic polisher.

That is the "commercial" kit, but the diy kit at walmart has the same materials. This kit works great IMO, I had a set of GMT 400 headlights come in the other day and you could hardly see through them at all, and they turned out beautiful.

 

[gsta86]

We use 500, 800 (dry) and then 1200 and 3000 (wet) all done with an pneumatic orbital sander. Then follow that up with 3m headlight cleaner and white pad and then polish with a black pad on a non orbital pneumatic polisher.

That is the "commercial" kit, but the diy kit at walmart has the same materials. This kit works great IMO, I had a set of GMT 400 headlights come in the other day and you could hardly see through them at all, and they turned out beautiful.

i saw the 3M kit on the shelf and youtube as well. i think going dry w/something like the 500 would work better in some cases, my DT lights were a pain in the butt, took a good about of elbow grease. might try and redo them w/what you mentioned. definitely need a power "something" to apply the final buffing